Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White

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Summary: I saw Frank Wu on "Booknotes" on CSPAN
Review: I enjoyed listening to Frank Wu on CSPAN. I agree with him in many ways that people automatically assume things about you when you are of a certain ethinic stereotype. But a strongly agree with another reviewer about including South Asians and Hispanics (Hispanics who are actually the largest minority race). South Asians for many reasons because they go through the exact same things as others have...and especially after Sept. 11...the "Middle Eastern" profile...that's just dispicable. Those of the South Asian countries such as India, Nepal and Sri Lanka are all non-Muslim but still get stereotyper just because of their skin color. It goes to show how ignorant most Americans are. Also I don't believe at all in hyphinating Americans. But all people of color share a common bond that they have ALL been discriminated against by whites. And that's the plain and outright truth whether the whites want to hear it or not. Not only have they been discriminated against in America but their own countries which goes to prove that racism exists in all and it's most cruel forms. But, I'm glad to see white America changing. And the fact is that white America is the one that needs to assimilate into the multi-ethnic culture, which is the true represenatative culture of this great nation. Politically correct has nothing to do with it.

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Summary: A 21st Century Masterwork
Review: I have read most of Frank Wu's popular columns and legal articles over the years, so I thought I knew what to expect when I opened the covers of his new book, "Yellow."

Instead of the lawyer, raconteur, social critic, and historian I had thought I knew, however, I met a philosopher poet on par with an Emerson or Thoreau. Weaving back and forth between legal decisions, Shakespearean dramas, SAT scores, and recollections from his childhood, he has produced a masterwork that will shape discussions of race for years to come.

Right from the first chapter, Professor Wu lays out the dilemma of being Asian in America in terms that are spare but evocative: "I remain not only a stranger in a familiar land, but also a sojourner through my own life....I alternate between being conspicuous and vanishing, being stared at or looked through. Although the conditions may seem contradictory, they have in common the loss of control. I am who others perceive me to be rather than how I perceive myself to be."

Not content to be an idle observer or a pawn in someone else's social drama, however, he draws on a lifetime of involvement in the great issues of our times to write thought-provoking and well-researched analyses of affirmative action, racial profiling, immigration restrictions, anti-Asian violence, interracial marriage, and much more. The beauty of Wu's writing, like Stephen Jay Gould's celebrated "This View of Life" column in Natural History magazine, is that a person who is at once a leader in his field and a person with a strong point of view can take the time to explain how he got to his position by bringing in history, statistics, biography, current events, and popular culture.

Despite his mastery of many bodies of knowledge, Professor Wu brings a humility to his endeavor that is refreshing in this era of the know-it-all television pundits. "I am a fraud," he says on page 37. "I am unqualified, because I cannot speak for all Asian Americans." Behind this humility, however, also lies an awareness of the enormity of his task as a person who will be called upon by the media to speak "for the race." Later in the same paragraph, he says, "I doubt that any imposter could do any better or would desire to try that impossible task. I suspect, however, that at every appearance after I give my usual disclaimer, my audience continues to see and hear me as a spokesperson on behalf of Asian Americans."

"Yellow" is worth the price simply for its cyclopedic reviews of the model minority myth, the perpetual foreigner myth, and the myths of merit and colorblindness in the debates over affirmative action. Not content with rehashing the same tired sources that appear in many scholarly and popular works on the topics, he has delved into out-of-print treatises, vintage Hollywood films, and speeches by Samuel Gompers, John Adams, and other historical figures. The Notes and Index sections of his book take up almost 50 pages, with the Notes providing avenues of scholarship for future writers on these topics.

Like the law professor he is--the first Asian American at historically-Black Howard University Law School-- Wu leaves us with more questions than answers. But, as he points out in several places in his book, that is precisely the point. "I aspire to provoke people to think for themselves rather than persuade them to agree with me," he says on page 16. Twenty-two pages later, he expands on that theme: "Each of us who has the opportunity to make an appearance at the podium or to see a byline in print should remember that if we do not speak for ourselves, someone else will speak for us--or worse, we will be ignored. We must give voice to our many views."

Building on the work of Helen Zia, Gary Okihiro, Ron Takaki, and others who have placed the Asian American experience in the context of a broader racial dilemma, Professor Wu challenges Asian Americans and the broader society to cast aside a simplistic two-part model of race: "On each of these divisive topics, Asian American examples can enhance our awareness of the color line between black and white, rather than devalue the anguish of African Americans, because Asian Americans stand astride the very color line and flag its existence for all to see. If the color line runs between whites and people of color, Asian Americans are on one side; if the color line runs between blacks and everyone else, Asian Americans are on the other side. The line, however, is drawn in part by Asian Americans, and in turn can be erased by us. Asian Americans can be agents of our own destinies, insisting that we are ourselves and refusing to be either black or white."

While the dayglow yellow cover of Professor Wu's book is a gantlet thrown down to those who would hold onto a stagnant bi-polar view of race, he acknowledges inside the book that his purpose is to get us all to see shades of gray. By the end of the book, while exploring interracial marriage and the importance of multi-racial coalitions, he reminds us that "civil society either founders on factions or is founded on coalitions. We all share a stake in the healing of the body politic. We must keep the faith."

With Frank Wu's help, we can keep the faith--and start to make that faith a reality.

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Summary: Oklahoma City - this country's beacon for racial tolerance
Review: I would have thought that after the Murrah building disaster in 1995(at the hands of a non-hyphenated white man), you might be able to take the illiterate Okie out of some people. I guess not.

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Summary: One viewpoint on U.S. race relations
Review: If you have the reasonable expectation that the author of any book on race is unlikely to share all your views, then I'd recommend that you read this book. I like this book because it provides one viewpoint that is unique in many ways and is therefore a good addition to any person's collection of thoughts on race relations (whether you agree with Wu or not). By the way, Wu's opinions are his own, as he points out himself, and do not represent THE "Asian" viewpoint (there's no such thing). The following arguments are particularly interesting:

1. Wu argues that Asian-Americans ought to support affirmative action for underrepresented minority groups even if they themselves are not included, saying that this will put the needs of the nation at large ahead of self-centered gain. (Contrast this with the writings of K. Anthony Appiah, Dinesh D'Souza and Shelby Steele, for example, for 4 incredibly disparate views of affirmative action by 4 people of color).
2. Wu also presents a case against racial profiling in spite of the fact that he thinks it is sometimes both rational and non-racist (!)
3. Wu dissects the question "Where are you really from?" and explains how it reflects the "perpetual foreigner" stereotype of people of Asian descent.

Overall, this book was a thought-provoking, sometimes troubling, always interesting read.

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Summary: Blatant lack of balance. Degraded scholarship.
Review: The book is inaccurate, and the plethora of misinformation jumped out at me several times each page. I could not believe his obfuscation of facts. (I will write up some examples.) His book is an attack on traditional America, and is founded on emotionalism which is much to my surprise since Orientals are usually exceptional enough at academics to not have to resort to a lower means of cognition. Frank Wu seems heavily socialistic (communism's egalitarian principles are far more harsh than democracy's), revealing his own unconstitionality, describing affirmative action as necessary and a "rational" form of racism! (Racism as long as it's against whites.)

One example of sophistry in Wu's book is his statement that "white Americans and african Americans commit most crimes at about the same rate," which was purposely generalized (what is "most?"), is completely untrue and easily refutable. Whites and Asians are far less likely to resort to street-level criminality than blacks and hispanics, the latter two almost mirroring each other and far surpassing the former. Later in that same chapter he buried the statement which said, "Blacks are far more likely to commit strong-arm robbery than whites." Why does he seem so beguiling by saying two different things when he could have placed both of those quoted sentences next to each other? It should also be revealed that Frank Wu is one who believes that black crime exists "because" of whites - how much more unfair could one be towards whites, I ask? Why wouldn't he think black crime existed in part because Asians outperform them as well?

I thought using double-standards is not the best thing to do when publishing a book. On page 262 he described his white ex-girlfriend who was fluent in Chinese: "She was an egg: white outside, yellow inside," showing the insensitive use of labels when he seems so fretful about them.

He didn't make sense in his chapter about U.S. Customs agents. We all know that many illegal Chinese, Triad gang members and dangerous criminals are skillfully advanced at crossing our borders from the North and Customs is our last defense from intrusion. So when he was returning to the U.S. at Ontario and received a second round of questioning because of his name and appearance, he retaliated by accusing the agents of "racial prejudice," and despite their ongoing lengthy return letters to answer his questions, still holds his grudge against them.

Painting whites as unkind racists proved to be bogus, when he quoted statements like: "blacks earn only $764 for every $1000 going to whites." I got the feeling he would have made the comparison even with only a $10 difference, and I wondered why he left Asians out of the pay range spectrum, since the subtitle says he's trying to break the black-white stigma? Of course he left many things out, like failing to report that if U.S. blacks were to be made into their own nation, they would rank as the tenth richest "country" in the world. He fails to state that when comparing American blacks descended from slaves with the same generation of today's blacks in Africa, America's blacks are 20-50 times richer, and simultaneously are the wealthiest and healthiest blacks anywhere. Of course he didn't print that in his book.

Because of the lack of balance in his reasoning time and again, I do not at all recommend this book and am highly disappointed in him.

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Summary: Simply irrational
Review: The book Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White to me is blatant and apparent proof that the Asian political voice has been hijacked and is fully rampant with an anti-white, anti-American viewpoint. While I do not think the mind of Mr. Wu is reflective of the vast majority of Asians in America, his scripture is about as proof-positive as I have seen that while white Americans (European Americans) have fought hard against segregation for decades under a naïve spell for the benefit of minorities, Asian politicians as well as university professors of various minority races are actually promoting the philosophy and indoctrination for racial separatism. The idea of racial equality is apparently not what elites like Frank Wu have in mind: the condemnation of America and the same people who created pro-Asian immigration laws from the middle 1960s - whites -- is. Far beyond equal rights for all, this new anti-anything-for-the-sake-of-it viewpoint, which airs in Yellow is nothing like what Martin Luther King, Jr., and the many other former civil rights activists were promoting. The mindset of the author in this book (Frank Wu) is hyper-eccentric, seemingly hateful, dangerously irrational, and anti-establishment with no clear objective other than dissent for destruction. To learn about the new form of hatred that a growing radical Asian intellectual base and other minorities are brewing, browse this book.

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Summary: Generalizing from a sample of one??
Review: The U.S. Census Bureau indicates that about 88 percent of U.S. residents who identified as "Asian" in 2000 were foreign born (61 percent) or the children of one or two foreign born parents (27 percent). The vast majority of Asians resident in the U.S. arrived in the U.S. or were born after 1990. It should come as no surprise that some Americans view some Asians curiously, especially those who wear interesting clothing.

Professor Hu suggests that the "well being" of Asians is a myth, but government surveys indicate the opposite is true. Three factors sociologists use to measure social status (highly correlated with well being) are education, occupation and income. In 2000, the Current Population Survey revealed that 45 percent of the foreign-born from Asia over age 25 had completed a B.A. compared with 26 percent of the natives. About 40 percent of the foreign-born from Asia were working in higher paying professional jobs, compared with 31 percent of natives. Households with foreign-born Asian householders had a median income of $51,000, compared with $41,000 for U.S. natives.

Although it might not be their "mother tongue" most Asian foreign born speak English. Foreign-born Asians who migrated from Africa, Canada, Hong Kong, etc. generally speak English quite well. Many of Asian foreign born attended university in the States before adjusting status to legal permanent resident. Many Chinese students attending college in America were protected by the U.S. government when China demanded their return home and have since become legal immigrants.

According to the 2000 Census, people of Asian heritage have migrated from India, China, Phillipines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Africa, Europe, Canada, Latin America and Australia -- in other words from all over the world not just the Asian land mass. Many are a mixture of European and Asian. Asians and Whites have a high rate of intermarriage.

The General Social Survey conducted by the University of Chicago indicates that people of Asian extraction are Roman Catholic and Vietnamese, Roman Catholic and Filipino, Chinese and Methodist, Indian and Hindu or Sikh, Indonesian and Muslim, and many other combinations. Simple generalizations about "Asians" are very very misleading.

Some problems remain for some refugees from Asia as elsewhere, but most problems for legal permanent immigrants will be resolved over time. On the other hand, thousands of Chinese foreign born have been smuggled into the U.S. across the Canadian border. These illegal aliens do indeed experience dire conditions and many are deported.

Mr Wu has complained about his treatment at the airport, but since Sept. 11, even middle class grandmothers and Senators are being frisked. My son (who is mixed race) carries a U.S. Navy passport, frequently flies commercial air on military business, and has been subjected multiple searches. No one is excepted from random searches.

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Summary: Its All Been Said Before
Review: This was a disappointing book. Besides being long-winded and self-indulgent, if not downright egotistical,the book repeats that which has long been at the core of Asian American Studies scholarship. However, the book oversimplifies and overgeneralizes in ways that reputable scholarship never would. One thing is clear from the book -- Professor Wu really thinks highly of Professor Wu.